Merry Christmas!

Thank you to all the parents who made our class party a success!  Here are some snapshots from today.

Spoiler Alert

The boys and girls have been working hard on their gifts for the parents.  They turned out a bit more fragile than I thought they would be.  Please look for them in the backpack when they get home.  The boys and girls are so proud of their work!

Reindeer

In art center this week the students were making a reindeer picture. Normally we do not have centers on Fridays.  However, I wanted to finish the center rotation because we are unable to have centers this week. I had parent volunteers running this center all week, but did not schedule a parent for Friday.  These 2 kindergartners did great on their own!  Awesome teamwork!! 

The expressions on their faces crack me up!

Centers

Our friends are working at a new center.  They are playing Bingo.  They pick a card with a word on the card.  Then they "tap out" the word.  Then find the matching picture on their Bingo sheet.  

For computer center this week we are using the Reading Eggs website.  Information came home this week with login and password. Try it out at home over break!

Snowflake Shop

Here are a couple pictures from shopping day..

Christmas Countdown

We made our Christmas Countdown today.  Please cut off a link every night before bed.

As friends finished they went around to help others. 

Fireman Visit

We had a visit today from one of our kindergartner's dad.  The boys and girls were excited to see him in his fireman gear.  He explained the parts of his gear and talked about fire safety.  

He showed the students how a fireman moves in a fire.  He successfully took the "scary" factor away from the fireman gear. Check out those K smiles!  

Halloween--group shot

What a fun time!

Halloween...

We had a great time!  Thank you to all the parents who came and helped out!  Here are some pictures from the party.  For some reason I ended up with a lot of pictures of the girls and not many of the boys.  Sorry about that!  I am going to try and find the group shot a staff member took for us.

Field Trip

Here are some snapshots...

Using magnifying glasses to check out a tree trunk.

Making our own tree trunk diagram.

Leaf puzzle/match

High Frequency Words

We have been practicing our high frequency words (sight words) daily.  I made a slide show of the kids holding words to use to practice in class.  Here is a preview:

Five Little Pumpkins

The boys and girls have been working on creating 5 little pumpkins.  We use the pumpkins when we sing Five Little Pumpkins.  In math we are working on number order and ordinal  numbers. 

Guided Reading

I have started taking guided reading groups.  I take 2-4 students at a time. During guided reading we will work with a book.  We are working on:

• finding the front of the book
• finding the back of the book
• locating the title
• predicting what the story will be about
• picture walk ---I guide the students as we look at the pictures and discuss what we see
• tracking print
• reading left to right
• word work

For word work we are focusing on a sight word.  I will have the students highlight the word in the book.  The above group was practicing writing the word with shaving cream.  

Read the Room

Read the Room is a literacy center that we will use throughout the year.  Right now we are starting with looking for letters in the classroom.  The students have a clipboard with a list a letters on post-it notes to look for in the room.  The student records the letter on his or her paper.

Then the students go on a letter hunt in the room.  They stick the matching letter post-it note on the letter in the room.

Writing Center

Here is a picture of our writing center.  We read the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? this week.  In writing center the boys and girls will complete the sentence: 

I see a (color word)      (animal).

This is one of our finished products!

Sentences

Today the book Lunch is coming home.  We worked with the book all week.  Today we added the last page.  First we worked with the words on big cards. 

We talked about how to order the words left to right.  We mixed the words up and read the words out of order too.  The children thought that was funny.  We also added a period to the end of our sentence.

Then we went to our seats to cut and glue the sentence on the last page.

Please keep the books at home to practice reading on your own.  

Literacy Centers

This week we are practicing literacy centers.  During literacy centers students work in small groups and I take a small group.  My group is working on letter formation using shaving cream.  We also had:

• matching lower and capital letters in the rice table
• using stamps to write name and stamp pictures
• computer (Starfall)
• act out a story with felt pieces
• shaving cream writing (with me)

Right now I am focusing on procedures.  Students are learning to work together, problem solve, follow directions, navigate the computer, and clean up.  They are off to a great start!  

MAP Assessment

The boys and girls took the MAP assessment this morning during media center time.  The kindergarteners worked hard!  It was a long test.  It took us an hour to complete.  We have not yet checked out books during media time yet.  Hopefully that will start up next week.  After the test the kindergarteners were a bit wiped out.  We decided to have a mini outside recess to stretch and run around a bit.